no-dig

[dave45]

does anyone actually recommend no-dig gardening for veggies?

I was unable to dig over my patch earlier this year, and it has reverted to the same jungle it was before I started... i.e. in less than six months.

no-dig gardening both appeals but seems impossible

my weeds keep winning (mainly couch grass, marestail, buttercups, rosebay wh,stickyweed, bindweed, docks and dandelions)

I have a picture somewhere of a weed growing trough tarmac, so I don't think wet newspaper will put up much of a fight

[safronsue]

I think it's great. not necessarily less labout intensive at the beginning though. last autumn we made 25 sq m of beds, using the layer method, starting with cardboard and making them about 30 cm deep with organic matter. i think we could have not used cardboard reallly with similar results tbh as it is the depth that suppresses weeds, these beds are now completely stocked with a wide variety of veg and beneficial flowers. of course the weeds are coming through but as the beds are so loose they come out easily.
i am in the situation now where i want to plant leeks and cabbage and have a choice of either digging hard dry weedy ground or of doing another layer bed which will involve shifting manure from my stable, (the hard part) and some mouldy bales, (no big deal), and transporting the contents of the garden compost, (needs turning anyway). I have some topsoil lying about. i will go with this option as i now know later i will not have to water anything like what i would have to if i were not doing this method. another bonus.
mulching is the key however, i use straw or cuttings at the moment but am planning on getting a wood chipper. if you have been unable to dig for health reasons then i guess setting up layer beds is also hard but mulching would not be, although i know some don't like the messy look.
I love gardening in this way! good luck with your garden

[gregorach]

I'm a big fan of no-dig, but you do need to do a reasonable job of clearing your perennial weeds first, and keep on top of the weeding. Provided you don't let your weeds set seed, the seed bank in the top few inches of soil will deplete over time, so you should get progressively fewer.

[dave45]

I think my garden is too big, with large areas of 45-degree slopes that are difficult to do anything with... perennial weeds just dominate the place... Couch grass has a 3-pronged attack - overground runners (like strawberries), underground vigorous white shoots and airborne seeds. Dandelions can flower and set seed in 2 days. Marestail can be dug out to a depth of a foot and still return from somewhere near the centre of the earth. I can see why folk resort to chemicals.

Following a trick my dad told me I created weed-suppressing paths using old carpet... the bloody weeds even grew on and colonised polypropylene carpet.

[safronsue]

nature will prevail! it's amazing where plants will grow i think.
this year we are making use of a strimmer to keep voracious weeds from seeding and just being more relaxed about the ones that stay, smuthering intrusive ones with mulch and planting what we do want densely. it's a different look and i like it.

[Gra]

I agree with Gregorach. I have been no-dig for a long time, 12 years on my current allotment and I now hardly have to worry about weeds. But initially it took a lot of hard work to fork out all the bindweed and couch grass, which needed repeating for several years despite also mulching areas with cardboard and or carpets. Mulching is great but I don't believe it will ever surpess pernicious weeds like these. I now mulch with compost or manure each year and as I say I no longer have to worry about being swamped with weeds and I can easily keep up with removing any weeds that do appear before they set seed. It takes time but is in the long run much better.

[gregorach]

Marestail can be dug out to a depth of a foot and still return from somewhere near the centre of the earth.

I believe its roots can be as deep as six feet... I've heard stories of people who've double-dug their entire plots through a sieve trying to get rid of it, to no avail. It and bindweed are the two weeds which noted no-dig guru Charles Dowding describes as "intractable".

I do have a fair bit of equisetum on my plot, but to be honest, I'm not sure how much of a problem it is. Sure, it looks untidy, but it doesn't seem to compete with my crops too effectively.

[seasidegirl]

I think plants are a better weapon than, or as well as, mulch. If you fork or pull out what weeds you can and immediately fill the space with strong plants then the plants will become more dominant. Variety of plants too with some to block light from the soil and some to attract beneficials and others to fix nitrogen. I put lots of plants in and also, at time of planting put seeds in the soil between them.

Diversity and density of stuff you want to grow blocks out the weeds in my experience anyway.

[Big Al]

I garden on a no dig no weed basis but the weeds still come up so I have to pull them out so I guess it's only a no dig gardening approach however the original book I read was no dig no weed organic gardening and this espoused the use of black plastic sheeting on allotments which I tried for a year with my potatoes but the weeds such as mares tail came through the slits with the potatoes although there was by far fewer weeds. The negative part for me was the condition of the soil after removing the plastic. Basically it was terrible and looked like the surface of the moon or mars.

Now I garden no dig with deep beds but very intensivly on a square foot theory and it's working for the weeds as well as there is no area available for weeds to grow.

For you, you will need to strip the weeds the best you can then make your bed with whatever you have available, plastic, carpet, newspaper, cardboard etc then pile it full of horse sHmuck and grow into that for this year.

Although you will never get rid of marestail completly you can seriously damage it by damaging the outer waxy surface of the plant then spraying with glyphosate. One fellow plot holder sprayed his marestail with a bleach solution to damage the waxy coat then used the glyphosate but if you want to garden organically then it's only dig and lift for both marestial and bindweed although some bindweeds are quite nice to look at, in particular the blue version of flowers.
HTH

[trinder]

Gosh, all these references to carpets being put down to suppress weeds. I thought you proper gardeners would go bonkers if you knew I'd done that!
One of the paddocks that I use for my horses opens onto a main road. So thinking (safety) I had a small trapezoid shape secure fence built ( effectively taking a chunk off the field) and a small square compound attached to that. I thought myself ever so clever. Firstly take the selected horse into the square , shut the gate behind you to stop any other horse accidentally following, then exit the main field safely.
The first square was left open when all horses were in so grazing that wasn't a problem but after a while the outer trapezoid area became so overgrown it was impassable ( you would not want to stand and graze there because if anything spooked the horse it had nowhere to run) I put down a strip of carpet but all the time felt guilty, because I thought the carpet would poison the ground as it rotted. Are you saying you plant on top?

[Sadoldhippy]

Where I am the soil is just between 2-5 inches and full of stones so we broke up pallets and put seaweed down then a double layer of carboard (wet as it had been in the garden for a while) and then topped it with a mix of home compost some bought in compost and soil from the tattie bags
Have to say the crops of turnips, kohl-rabi, cabbages and shallots were great.
Doing more beds over the winter for next season

[diggernotdreamer]

because if anything spooked the horse it had nowhere to run) I put down a strip of carpet but all the time felt guilty, because I thought the carpet would poison the ground as it rotted. Are you saying you plant on top?

Reference using carpets, the only time I ever grew on top of a carpet was a very old pure wool one, I put the carpet on top of the ground and put loads of compost on top and grew no dig spuds, the carpet smothered the weeds beneath and broke down nicely. I would avoid using carpets that are a mixture because when the wool part degrades you will be left with a stringy mess. 100 per cent synthetic carpet can be used under woodchip or straw on paths as it won't really degrade but I wouldn't plant on top of it., goes without saying never use a foam backed carpet because the foam just falls off. I tend never to use any non degradeable mulch material and prefer cardboard or paper topped with grass mowings